Saturday, April 26, 2008

First entry

Well, this comes overdue. I've been here three nights now, so there's some catching up to do. Apologies for that, but I have some pretty good excuses on hand. My sleep pattern, for example, was entirely out of whack the first few days, namely because there was no pattern. Look at this hour-by-hour sleep chart, with red indicating not sleeping and bold=sleeping:

Monday, April 21: Overland Park, Kansas, USA

9 a.m. Central Time: sleeping10 a.m.: not sleeping11 a.m.: not sleepingnoon: not sleeping1 p.m.: not sleeping2 p.m.: not sleeping3 p.m.: not sleeping4 p.m.: not sleeping5 p.m.: not sleeping6 p.m.: not sleeping7 p.m.: not sleeping8 p.m.: not sleeping9 p.m.: not sleeping10 p.m.: not sleeping11 p.m.: not sleeping

7 a.m.: not sleeping8 a.m.: not sleeping9 a.m.: not sleeping10 a.m.: not sleeping

Newark Airport, Newark, New Jersey

noon Eastern Time: not sleeping

Continental Flight No. 89 to Beijing, China

1 a.m. Beijing Time (GMT+8): not sleeping2 a.m.: not sleeping3 a.m.: not sleeping4 a.m.: sleeping5 a.m.: not sleeping6 a.m.: not sleeping7 a.m.: not sleeping8 a.m.: not sleeping9 a.m.: not sleeping10 a.m.: not sleeping11 a.m.: not sleepingnoon: not sleeping1 p.m.: not sleeping

Wednesday, April 23: Beijing, China

2 p.m.: not sleeping3 p.m.: not sleeping4 p.m.: not sleeping5 p.m.: not sleeping6 p.m.: not sleeping7 p.m.: not sleeping8 p.m.: not sleeping9 p.m.: not sleeping10 p.m.: not sleeping11 p.m.: not sleeping

There's also the matter of government censorship thoughtfulness at this critical juncture in the country's history, where an emergent society whose access to technology -- the great soapbox of the 21st century -- has the ability to recalculate the boon of economic success in terms of human costs, threatening to turn every marker of "progress" into a referendum on human rights. Ah, that's a matter for another time. More on point: originally I wanted WordPress to host this blog, but I couldn't ease it past the Great Firewall of China no matter what I tried. And trust me, I tried everything. If you want to know what the government censors, Google it and then let me know, because Google's censored. As is, of all sites, Xanga, which is populated by Asians (wHo ArE aLl So HiP) -- talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

Anyway, expect a flurry of posts in the coming couple of days. In fact, by the time you read this -- seeing as how it's 4:17 a.m. in New York right now and I'm still going strong -- I'll probably have a second entry up. We'll settle into a more leisurely pattern in the coming days and weeks. And months. Shit. Is it really months?